IjiHItHnijiii; 



E457 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DDDD1737DDH 



A DEFENCE of the MOTHER 
CONVERSION AND CREED 

of 

Abraham Lincoln 



^^ 



A DEFENCE OF LINCOLN'S 

MOTHER, CONVERSION 

AND CREED 

Being an open letter to the author of 

"The Soul <?/x\braham Lincoln'* 

By 

JAMES M. MARTIN 



Privatel'^ Published at Minneapolis 
1921 




.Z 

• Mai 









i 




Nancy Hanks 



THE days of the distaff, the skillet, the Dutch oven, 
the open fireplace with its iron crane, are no 
longer, but homemaking is still the finest of the fine 
arts. Nancy Hanks was touched with the divine atti- 
tudes of the fireside. Loved and honored for her wit, 
geniality and intelligence, she justified an ancestry 
reaching beyond the seas, represented by the notable 
names of Hanks, Shipley, Boone, Evans and Morris. 
To her was entrusted the task of training a giant, in 
whose childhood memories she was hallowed. Of her 
he said, "My earliest recollection of my mother is sit- 
ting at her feet with my sister, drinking in the tales 
and legends that were related to us." To him on her 
deathbed she said, 'T am going away from you, Abra- 
ham, and I shall not return. I know that you will be a 
good boy ; that you will be kind to Sarah and to your 
father. I want you to live as I have taught you, and 
to love your Heavenly Father." "All that I am or hope 
to be I owe to my angel mother." (Abraham Lwcoln.) 

(From the inscription on inside wall of the 
granite building erected in Hardin County, 
Kentucky, on the site of, and housing, the log 
cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born.) 



Open Letter 



Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 28, 1921. 
Rev. William E Barton. 
Oak Park, Illinois. 

Dear Sir : 1 have read with interest your book 
entitled, "The Soul of Abraham Lincoln." The sub- 
ject has been one of absorbing- interest to me from my 
boyhood. 

Reared in a Christian home, where the speeches, 
debates, every messag^e, proclamation, and item of per- 
sonal news of our great President was anxiously 
awaited and carefully read and studied by an ardent 
Whig-Republican, with real and genuine interest, no 
subsequent environment has caused me to forget those 
early lessons, — my reverence of the soul of Abraham 
Lincoln has grown with my age, and my love of him 
and of every true word written about him increases as 
the years go by. 

(I must crave pardon for this personal tone which 
seems necessary to set forth my interest in the 
subject.) 

I learned in those years, when scarcely ten years of 
age, at my father's fireside, that a mighty leader, an 
incorruptible statesman, had arisen in the land. The 
precept of that home was that Lincoln had come to his 
place in answer to the prayers of God's people, white 
and black, for generations past, and every utterance of 
his, that revealed his own soul, showed his Christian 
belief, or disclosed his faith in an over-ruling Provi- 
dence or dependence upon the God of our nation as 
his personal God, was eagerly noted, and thanks given 
therefor at the family altar. 

Seven 



The keen sadness of that serious day in April, 1865, 
has never faded from my memory ; I recall my father's 
tears as I, then not quite fourteen, draped my horse in 
black and rode in the solemn funeral procession to 
listen to a funeral oration by the best talent that the 
neighborhood afforded. It was a sad, sad day to 
those who loved Abraham Lincoln as our family truly 
loved him. So I am interested in the subject you 
selected for the title of your work. 

That the soul of Abraham Lincoln was true, honest, 
sincere, loving, devout, free from selfishness, prejudice 
and bias, we then believed, and my father, I know, had. 
from his diligent study of his every utterance available, 
and from contemporary testimony of witnesses — now 
dust — determined that Abraham Lincoln was a true, 
devout, praying Christian, that he loved the Lord his 
God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and his 
neighbor as himself, and would, I know, have sub- 
scribed to the estimate of Reverend Chiniquy, Lincoln's 
client and fast friend, whom you have quoted appro- 
priately in connection with a remarkable interview at 
the White House, when he said : 

"I found in him the most perfect type of Chris- 
tianity I ever met. Professedly, he was neither a 
strict Presbyterian, nor a Baptist, nor a Methodist ; 
but he was the embodiment of all which is more 
perfect and Christian in them. His religion was 
the very essence of what God wants in man." 

What more could be said except to add the testi- 
mony of another who knew him, and deliberately 
stated in an oration : 

*T present Mr. Lincoln as the best specimen of 
Christian man I have ever encountered in public 
life." 

No miscroscope can add to either of these. 
In your book you have, with the tradition of sup- 
Eight 



pressed editions, but for the purpose of arg^uincnt of 
course, reprinted the objectionable paragraphs in tlie 
works of Herndon and Lamon, the two familiar 
friends, wherein they each strove, without success, to 
make his Master appear such a one as he himself was. 
an infidel — and by your definition of '"infidel," and the 
many interesting illustrations gleaned from your per- 
sonal experiences in the environment of the wilderness 
(though probably more than fifty years after Lincoln 
had come out of it), you have, I am sure, explained 
away the mistaken charge of infidelity, and shown that 
neither of the friends really meant what he said. The 
reprinting of the charges will, of course, not hurt 
Lincoln any more than the manj- campaign slanders 
really hurt, though they pained him, they did no injury 
to the pure soul of their object. 

When I took up your volume, I noticed with joy 
your statement that "This book attempts to be a digest 
of all the available evidence concerning the religious 
faith of Abraham Lincoln. It undertakes also to weigh 
the evidence and to pass judgment, the author's own 
judgment, concerning it. If the reader's judgment 
agrees with the author's, the author will be glad ; but 
if not, at least the facts arc here set forth in their full 
essential content." (The italics are, of course, my 
own.) 

This promise, I soon found with regret, was very 
far from being kept. Many facts and much evidence 
first hand and proven by indisputable testimony, is 
clearly omitted. This appears most noticeably in 
regard to the character, beliefs and influence of Mr. 
Lincoln's mother. When a lawyer has promised the 
production of certain testimony, and then omits to 
introduce it, the conjecture is that his case has not 
developed just as he had planned it. But lawyers are 
usually frankly partisan. 

Nine 



In my humble opinion, you have done injustice to 
your subject by the manner of your treatment of the 
mother of Abraham Lincohi. 

The Religious Influence of 

Lincoln's Mother. 

You give a chapter of thirty-tw^o pages to "The 

environment of Lincohi's boyhood," and scarcely a 

line, surely not a full paragraph without detraction, to 

the character, teaching or influence of his mother. 

In effect, you say you have learned from reading 
Buckle's History of Civilization, that the development 
of an individual or a nation is profoundly influenced by 
environment. I have not read Buckle. Does he show 
a single authentic case where environment has swept 
away the firmly fixed spiritual anchor of an individual? 
Does your cited authority reverse the judgment of 
Solomon, rendered and formulated in an injunction 
three thousand years ago ? 

Environment, of course, should be studied. Envi- 
ronment may warp or develop, may profoundly influ- 
ence an individual life; but if the anchor is shown to 
have been firmly fixed, as in Lincoln's case, I venture 
to say no environment, such as his is known to have 
been, has ever been shown to sweep that anchor away 
from the rock of truth. 

There may be drifting and tossing, slacking and 
straining of the cable, darkness and storms may for 
years hide the rock, but the anchor holds, and the bark 
will not depart. So said the wise man, and so the 
religious life of Lincoln illustrated. 

Have you not laid unprofitable stress upon the 
"character of the preaching which Abraham Lincoln 
heard in his boyhood" and forgotten his mother's 
Bible, and his mother's prayers? 

You, no doubt, say truly that the prevailing and 
almost the sole type of preaching in that part of 

'I'cn 



Indiana during- Lincoln's boyhood ''was a very unpro- 
gressive type" and "against it the boy, Abe Lincoln, 
rebelled." Why? Was it not the influence of his 
mother's teaching? 

In attempting to set forth "The True Story of 
Lincohi's Spiritual Life and Convictions," as the adver- 
tisement of your book expresses it, can Lincoln's 
mother, her faith, her religion, her teachings, be 
ignored? Can one properly learn the secret of a tree's 
development and ignore its root ? 

In my humble opinion, it was very much more 
important to study the mother's religion, who held 
constant communion with the boy until he was nearly 
ten years of age, than to study the environments of 
either that mother or that boy during that period, or to 
inquire closely into the particular kind of a church that 
she joined with her husband, in a wilderness where 
churches were scarce, or the kind of preaching that the 
boy heard in those days, or even the preaching that he 
heard, or failed to hear, in after years, but of course 
this is only my opinion. 

When I say religion, I mean, not the particular 
creed or doctrine of any church that she may have 
joined, but what was her girlhood religion, her wo- 
man's faith, her belief in God and about God, and her 
love of her boy. 

Lincoln himself has not left the question of his 
mother's influence in doubt. Probably few prominent 
men of fifty-six have left such indisputable evidence 
as to the character and influence of his mother, and 
where and by whom his spiritual anchor was fixed. 

I do not find that you have quoted any of these 
items of evidence in your book of upwards of 400 
pages, and this is one of the omissions that I com- 
plain of. 

^ lilcven 



J. G. Holland, as you know, in 1865, after the 
assassination, wrote a life of Lincoln, and in the prep- 
aration thereof went into the neighborhoods of all 
three of the states where Lincoln had lived, and where 
there were at that time many still living who knew 
personally Nancy Hanks Lincoln, the President's 
mother, and personally gathered the evidence as to 
both mother and son. 

That Holland was not lacking in "training in or 
inclination toward historical investigation" (as you 
say Bishop Fowler was) must be admitted, and after 
such investigation he deliberately placed on record the 
facts that he found, and the conclusions that he came 
to, as follows : 

"Mrs. Lincoln, the mother, was evidently a wo- 
man out of place among those primitive surround- 
ings. She was five feet, five inches high, a slender, 
pale, sad and sensitive woman, with much in her 
nature that was truly heroic, and much that shrank 
from the rude life around her. A great man never 
drew his infant life from a purer or more womanly 
bosom than her own ; and Mr. Lincoln ahmys 
looked back to her ivith an unspeakable affection. 
Long after her sensitive heart and weary hands had 
crumbled into dust, and had climbed to life again 
in forest flowers, he said to a friend, with tears in 
his eyes : 'All that I am, or hope to be, I oive to 
my angel mother — blessings on her memory.' " 

"His character was planted in this Christian 
mother's life. Its roots were fed by this Christian 
mother's love ; and those that have wondered at 
the truthfulness and earnestness of his mature 
character have only to remember that the tree was 
true to the soil from zvhich it sprang." 

Even Herndon, who lifted up his heel against the 
son — mistakenly, no doubt — left on record a loving 
tribute to that mother, and he quotes from a friend, 
present at her deathbed, on October 5, 1818: 

Twelve 



"The mother knew she was going to die. and 
called her children (Abe and Sarah) to her bedside. 
She was very weak, and the children leaned over 
while she .c^ave her last message. Placing her feeble 
hand on little Abe's head, she told him to be kind 
and good to his father and sister ; to both she said 
'Be good to one another,' expressing a hope that 
they might live as they had been taught by her, to 
lox'e their kindred and ivorship God." 

Holland, again (|Uoting from the White House, in 
Lincoln's dark days, when he had buried his little 
Willie, says that after the funeral, when the Christian 
nurse expressed sympathy for him, Lincoln replied : 

"I wish I had that childlike faith you speak of, 
and I trust He wall give it to me." And then he 
spoke of his mother, whom so many years before he 
had committed to the dust among the wilds of 
Indiana. In this hour of his great trial, the mem- 
ory of her who had held him upon her bosom, and 
soothed his childish griefs, came back to him with 
tenderest recollections. 7 remember her prayers,' 
said he, 'and they have ahvays follozved me. They 
hare clung to me all my life.' " 

Isaac N. Arnold, Esq., was an intelligent, credible 
witness, an intimate friend, an attorney, and member 
of Congress, and had exceptional opportunities to 
know whereof he testified, and he says : 

"No more reverent Christian than he ever sat 
in the executive chair, not excepting Washington. 
. . . From the time he left Springfield to his 
death he not only himself continually prayed for 
divine assistance, but continually asked the prayers 
of his friends for himself and his country. . . . 
Doubtless, like others, he passed through periods 
of doubt and perplexity, but liis faith in a Divine 
Providence began at his mother's knee, and ran 
through all the changes of his life." 

There is at least one more direct w^itness from 
whom you have quoted a remarkable incident — Father 

Thirteen 



Chiniquy — "The Apostle of Temperance of Canada." 
After describing his own deliverance from a criminal 
charge, based on perjured testimony before the court 
at Urbana, Illinois, in May, 1856, in which, after the 
adjournment of court at ten o'clock at night, the first 
day of the trial, his attorney, Lincoln, informed him 
that unless he could establish an alibi, he would be 
convicted in the morning, and added : "The only way 
to be sure of a favorable verdict tomorrow is that 
Almighty God would take our part, and show your 
innocence. Go to Hun and pray, for He alone can save 
you," and when, at three o'clock, an unknown witness 
came and he was saved, that in Lincoln's talk with him 
in the morning, he said : 

"The way you have been saved from their hand, 
the appearance of that young and intelligent Miss 
Moffat, who was really sent by God in the very 
hour of need, when, I confess it again, I thought 
everything was nearly lost, is one of the most extra- 
ordinary occurrences I ever saw. It makes me 
remember what I have too often forgotten, and 
what my mother often told me ivhen young — that 
our God is a prayer-hearing God. This good 
thought, sown into my young heart by that dear 
mother's hand, zvas just in my mind zvhen I told 
you, 'Go and pray, God alone can save you.' But 
I confess to you that I had not faith enough to 
believe that your prayer would be so quickly and so 
marvelously answered by the sudden appearance of 
that interesting young lady last night." 

I repeat, I know of no man of prominence, who 
has not written his own autobiography, who has left 
more unimpeachable evidence as to where his spiritual 
anchor was fixed, and who it 7vas that placed it. 
Neither his mother's character, nor her religious faith 
can be ignored in any proper study of the spiritual life 
of Abraham Lincoln. 

It is true that you have not omitted entire reference 
to that mother. On page 86, when describing the 

Fourteen 



opportunities of the bleak environment, you say, 
"Herndon tells us of the fondness of the Hanks girls 
for camp-meetings, and describes one in which Nancy 
appears to have participated, a little time before her 
marriage. We have no reason to believe that was her 
last camp-meeting." 

The facts that Herndon has left on record, are : 

"The Hanks girls were great at camp-meetings." 
"The Hanks girls were the finest singers and 

shouters in our county." 

But even he seemed to hesitate to assert that it was 
Nancy Hanks that participated in the scene, at a certain 
Kentucky camp-meeting, fantastically described by his 
informant, an outsider, who, with his girl, stood upon 
a bench in order to look over into the altar, and to 
laugh at the shouting. 

Notwithstanding this reference to camp-meetings, 
you had deliberately asserted, at the top of page 48: 
"It is a remarkable fact that the Lincoln family appears 
never at any time in its history, to have been strongly 
under the influence of Methodism." 

Was it the Presbyterians or the hard shell Baptists 
that conducted camp-meetings in Kentucky during the 
first decade of 1800? I am somewhat in the dark, 
never having taught school in that state, even in the 
80's, and not being specially educated in historical 
investigations. 

To emphasize the fact that you make the statement 
deliberately, you add a note: "I do not forget that 
Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married by 
Reverend Jesse Head, who was a Methodist preacher, 
but I do not find evidence that Mr. Head asserted any 
marked influence over them. Mr. Head was not only 
a minister, but a Justice of the Peace, and anti-slavery 
man, and a person of strong and righteous character. 

Fifteen 



I am not sure whether the fact that he performed the 
marriage is not due in some measure to the fact that 
he was about the court house, and a convenient minister 
to find." 

This insinuation of a hasty marriage is unworthy, 
and of course unfounded and false. The record shows 
that the marriage bond was fonnally executed and filed 
two days before the wedding, and that the marriage 
was celebrated at the home of Richard Berry, and the 
infare at the home of her guardian, to both of which 
all the neighbors came, etc. 

Is there any evidence that the active circuit rider, 
Rev. Jesse Head, "Deacon of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church" (as he signed himself), was in the habit of 
loafing around the court house ? Where was this court 
house located? 

At another place in your work, you admit that : 

*T am inclined to think that the Hanks family 
had Methodist antecedents. Thomas and Nancy 
Lincoln were married by a Methodist preacher, 
Rev. Jesse Head. He is known to have been a foe 
of slavery, and there is some reason to think that 
the Lincoln family derived some part of its love of 
freedom from him." 

There is no question of the correctness of these 
tardily admitted facts, and I am inclined to think that 
investigation would show that the hymns that Nancy 
Hanks sung were those of Charles Wesley, and that 
at the camp-meetings there were many sermons 
preached on Free Grace, and "Whosoever will," in 
short, that she was an ardent, devout, active Methodist. 

Whether she was a Methodist or not is, in my view, 
unimportant. She was as the histories show, a loving, 
sincere, earnest, praying mother, who trained her boy 
in the way he should go, and any attempt to take from 
her her rightful crown of glory, and give it to any 

Sixteen 



preacher, or group of preachers, or cast it upon envi- 
ronment, will and should fail. Justice is due to her 
memory. 

You have not written into any line the name of the 
denomination to which you belong, or the specific creed 
or doctrine to which you adhere. As a historian, of 
course, your personal views are entirely immaterial. 
A historian is expected to give all the facts without 
permitting his own views to influence the record by 
omissions, or otherwise. When a man undertakes, 
however, to record his own personal judgment, it is 
important to know what his personal beliefs are, as 
even unconsciously his mind may be warped thereby. 

I have no reason for leaving anything to be read 
between the lines, and frankly say that I am a Metho- 
dist — a layman — and do not believe that my mind has 
been greatly warped by reading theology. It is not, 
however, my aim, and if you can comprehend it, it is 
not my wish or desire to prove that Lincoln was a 
Methodist. 

I think Father Chiniquy came nearer the truth 
when he said that Lincoln was the embodiment of all 
which is more perfect and Christian in more than one 
denomination. 

Personally, I believe that Lincoln's belief embodied 
more that was distinctively Methodist than Calvinist, 
and I do resent the slight you have attempted to place 
upon his mother. 

Rev. Col. J. F. Jaquess — Conversion. 

1 respectfully submit that in your book you did 
injustice to my friend and former pastor. Rev. Edward 
L. Watson, D. D., now of Baltimore, in that you 
charge him with having reported hearsay details as 
direct testimony, and have done wrong to the memory 



of Rev. Col. Jaquess in your assertion of the question- 
ableness of the story as told by him, and wrong to the 
memory of Mr. Lincoln, in repeatedly asserting that 
his life, after 1847 (or even 1839), was not consistent 
with the truth of the events recited by Colonel Jaquess. 

You have given over two pages to a subhead, "Was 
Abraham Lincoln a Methodist ?" 

Who did you ever know to claim that Lincoln was 
a Methodist? 

Tn your book you say : 

(1) "This question w^ould seem to require no 
answer, yet it is one that should receive an answer, 
for claims have been made, and are still current, 
which imply that Lincoln was actually converted in 
the Methodist church, whose doctrine he accepted 
because Calvinism was repugnant to him ; and that 
while he continued to attend the Presbyterian 
church, he was essentially a Methodist." 

(2) "At a reunion of the Seventy-third Illinois 
V'olunteers, held in Springfield on September 28 
and 29, 1897, the colonel of that regiment, Rev. 
James F. Jaquess, D. D., related an incident in 
which he stated that while he was serving a Metho- 
dist church in Springfield in i8s9, Mr. Lincoln 
attended a series of revival services held in that 
church, and was converted." 

(3) "Twelve years later, in 1909, in connection 
with the Centenary Celebration of the birth of 
Lincoln, the story was reprinted, ivith certain added 
details obtained from the brother of Colonel 
Jacquess. 

The death of Colonel Jaquess and the additions 
made by his brother give this incident its permanent 
form in the Christian Advocate article of November 
11, 1909." (See appendix.) 

(4) "That the story as told by Colonel Jaquess 
must have some element of truth I think beyond 
question; that it occurred exactly as he related it, 
I greatly doubt. The years between 1839 and 1897 

Eighteen 



numbered fifty-eight, and that is more than ample 
time for a man's memory to magnify and color 
incidents almost beyond recognition." 

"The story as it is thus told lacks confirmatory 
evidence. // Lincoln was converted in a Methodist 
church in 1839 and remained converted, a consider- 
able number of events which occurred in subsequent 
years might reasonably have been expected to have 
been otherwise than they really were. Each reader 
must judge for himself in the light of all that we 
know of Abraham Lincoln how much or how little 
of this story is to be accepted as literal fact. The 
present writer cannot say that he is convinced by 
the story." 

(In Note) — "It is a stor>' which it is impossible 
to fit into the life of Lincoln. In Latest Light on 
Lincoln, Page 396, Chapman says, 'There is every 
reason for giving this remarkable story unquestion- 
ing credence.' On the contrary, there is every 
good reason for questioning it at every essential 
point, and the questions do not evoke satisfactory 
answers." 

After thus attempting to discount the story, and 
discredit both Dr. Watson and Colonel Jaquess, you 
pubHshed in full Dr. Watson's article of November 11, 
1909, in the Appendix to your volume. 

A careful reading of the article, even if not sympa- 
thetic, will show the many errors in your attempted 
repudiation of its truth. Dates are sometimes impor- 
tant, and every lawyer knows that testimony from 
memory as to dates is very unreliable, and usually 
practically worthless. It behooves a historian, there- 
fore, to check up the dates, unless they are based 
specifically upon record. 

The date that Rev. Jaquess preached the sermon 
upon "Ye must be born again" — which Mr. Lincoln 
listened to, and afterwards went to the parsonage where 

Ninctfcn 



Mr. Jaquess and his wife prayed with him, was in 
May, 1847, not in 1839. I give simply the proper 
date, and will hereafter give the evidence that sustains 
it. 

Mr. Jaquess' own story, as told by himself at the 
Eleventh Annual Reunion of the Survivors of the 
Seventy-third Regiment, held September 28 and 29, 
1897, and which Dr. Watson correctly copied into his 
article of November 11, 1909, is as follows : 

"Very soon after my second year's work as a 
minister in the Illinois conference, I was sent to 
Springfield. ... It was one Sunday morning, 
a beautiful morning in May . . . the church 
happened to be filled that morning. It was a good 
sized church, but on that day all the seats were 
filled. I had chosen for my text the words, 'Ye 
must be born again,' and during the course of my 
sermon I laid particular stress on the word 'must.' 
Mr. Lincoln came in the church after the services 
had commenced, and there being no vacant seats, 
chairs were put in the altar in front of the pulpit 
and Mr. Lincoln and Governor French and wife 
sat in the altar during the entire services, Mr. 
Lincoln on my left and Governor French on my 
right, and I noticed that Mr. Lincoln appeared to 
be deeply interested in the sermon. A few days 
after that Sunday Mr. Lincoln called on me and 
informed me that he had been greatly impressed 
with my remarks on Sunday and that he had come 
to talk to me further on the matter. I invited him 
in, and my wife and I talked and prayed with him 
for hours. Now, I have seen many persons con- 
verted ; I have seen hundreds brought to Christ, 
and if ever a person was converted, Abraham Lin- 
coln was converted that night in my house. His 
wife was a Presbyterian, but from remarks he 
made to me he could not accept Calvinism. He 
never joined my church, but I will always believe 
that since that night Abraham Lincoln lived and 
died a Christian gentleman." 

Twenty 



Now, what is there in this story that is improbable, 
false, or inconsistent with the future life, habits and 
actions of Mr. Lincoln? What did he do after May, 
1847, that was inconsistent with the most critical con- 
struction of Colonel Jaquess' statement? 

Dr. Watson, in his article in the Christian Advocate, 
quoted this statement, word for word. He added 
nothing to it, except his own expression of pleasure 
that he was able to prove that Methodism had a hand 
in the making of the greatest American. 

If you had read with care the first part of Dr. 
Watson's article, you would have seen that he was 
giving from memor)' the narrative told him personally 
by Colonel Jaquess twelve years before. There is not 
one syllable in the narrative admitted by Dr. W'atson, 
to be "added details obtained from the brother of 
Colonel Jaquess," and your repeated assertion that Dr. 
Watson had reported "additions made by his brother" 
is wrong, and a wrong on your part to Dr. Watson. 

That Dr. Watson had carried in his mind for twelve 
years without memoranda the narrative as clearly as 
stated, is really remarkable. He wrote it out in 1909 
without having before him, very evidently, any memo- 
randa of the incident, — not even the garbled accounts 
printed in the Minneapolis newspapers in May, 1897. 

It appears that after Colonel Jaquess had told the 
incident to Dr. W^atson, in May, 1897, that he was 
invited by him to attend the Minneapolis Ministers' 
Monday Meeting, which he did, and told to them there 
the same story that he related in September of the 
same year, before the soldiers' reunion in Springfield. 

Dr. Watson having apparently partially prepared 
his article of 1909, discovered, after doing so, that 
the record was in the minutes of the proceedings of the 
reunion of the Regiment of 1897, and instead of re- 

Twenfy-one 



writing his own memory- report, he says : "The narra- 
tive as told thus far is as my memory recalls it. Since 
writing it, the same, as told by Colonel Jaquess has 
recently been discovered by me in the minutes of the 
proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Reunion Survivors 
Seventy-third Regiment, Illinois Infantry Volunteers, 
page 30, a copy of which is before me," and he then 
quotes the record, both of which are before me. 

As to the dates given by Dr. Watson from memory, 
there are three, only one of them is important — 1894 — 
the date that he came to Minneapolis, is correct ; 
"1896," the date when he met Colonel Jaquess, should 
be 1897; and 1839 as the date of Colonel Jaquess' 
sermon that Lincoln listened to, should be 1847 ; but 
only one of them is important — 1847. 

If you had investigated the question, as a historian, 
before condemning it, you would have noticed this 
error in dates, because Colonel Jaquess was not a 
minister of the gospel in 1839. You will note that 
Colonel Jaquess says that the date that he came to 
Spring-field was "very soon after my second year's 
work as a minister." The Illinois was a Spring con- 
ference. Methodist ministers were appointed annually, 
but never more than three years to the same place, and 
seldom more than two. 

The year book of Depauw University — 1884 — gives 
Colonel Jaquess as an alumnus, with the following: 
"Graduated 1845, entered Illinois Conference ; 1845 
appointed to Shawneetown Circuit; 1846 Petersburg; 
1847-48 Springfield; 1849 President Female College, 
Jackson; 1855 Paris Station; 1856 President College, 
Ouincy, Illinois ; . . . Address : London, Eng- 
land." 

Hon. Augustus C. French was Governor of Illinois 
from December 9, 1846, to 1852, an irregular term,. 

Twenty-two 



caused by the Constitution being amended durin,e^ his 
first term. 

Lincoln was in Springfield in May, 1847, and until 
November, when he was absent for two years in Wash- 
ington, D. C, in Congress. 

This record does not contradict, but corroborates 
the story of Colonel Jaquess that in May, soon after 
his second year in the ministry, he had the opportunity 
of preaching a sermon to which Abraham Lincoln and 
Governor French and his wnfe might have listened. 
Did he? Who is the witness? Was he credible? 

Let us look for a moment at your discounts : 

( 1 ) You assert that it is implied that Lincoln was 
actually converted in the Methodist church, whose 
doctrine he accepted, and that while he continued to 
attend the Presbyterian church, he was essentially a 
Methodist. 

The record does not disclose any discussion of a 
distinctive "doctrine," accepted or otherwise. It was 
the necessity of a 4l£w Jiixtb-that interested Lincoln. 
There w-as no continuing to attend the Presbyterian 
church, because Lincoln had not commenced in 1847, 
much less in 1839, according to your own record, to 
attend that church with his wife. It was not until 
after February 1, 1850, that he even became acquainted 
with Dr. James Smith, of Sacred Memory. 

(2) You are wrong in asserting that, in 1897, be- 
fore his comrades in Springfield, Rev. James F. 
Jaquess, D. D., related an incident in which he stated 
that "while he was serving a Methodist church in 
Springfield in i8jp, Mr. Lincoln attended his service," 
etc. Colonel Jaquess pointed out the correct date, and 
a historian should not have perpetuated the erroneous 
date, given expressly from memory of a narrator, not 

Twenty-three 



claiming to have been especially "trained in historical 
research." 

(3) You are doubly wrong in asserting that "The 
story was reprinted 2vith certain added details obtained 
from the brother of Colonel Jaqaess." 

The brother added not a syllable, and even much 
less than a sympathetic reading of the article of No- 
vember 11, 1909, would have shown this clearly, and 
that your assertions were a direct reflection on Dr. 
Watson. 

(4) Your grounds for discrediting the story is the 
assumption that Colonel Jaquess had magnified and 
colored the incident almost beyond recognition during 
the fifty years that elapsed between the incident and 
the telling. 

Stories grow by retelling. There is no evidence 
that Colonel Jaquess repeated the story more than 
three times, once to Dr. Watson, once to the Minne- 
apolis ministers, and once to his comrades at their 
reunion. 

Your questioning reflects on the character of 
Colonel Jaquess, and calls for a showing of the kind 
of man he really was, which I will aim to touch on 
hereafter. 

Why Colonel Jaquess did not repeat this story over 
and over again during the fifty years, so that others 
who had written about Lincoln should have learned 
of it before 1897, is explained by the fact that Colonel 
Jaquess was not living in America at the time the 
questions were being raised as to the religious beliefs 
of Abraham Lincoln. 

At the close of the war in 1866, he went into the 
Freedmen's Bureau, and until 1875 was engaged there 
and in work of restoration in the South. He then 

Twenty-four 



became interested in business which took him to Ent?- 
land, and for over twenty years he resided abroad. 

The record only shows that he was able to attend 
two of the reunions of his regiment, at both of which 
he made the annual address. 

In 1889 he came from London, expressly to attend 
that meeting, and after traveling 4,000 miles and 
meeting his comrades at their reunion, he stayed but 
twenty-four hours, and returned to meet pressing 
engagements in England. 

The other time that he met with the regiment was 
in September, 1897, when he not only made the annual 
address, but related the incident in regard to Mr. 
Lincoln, which Dr. \\'atson quoted. 

Bishop Fowler's oration, to which he referred, and 
which recalled the incident to his mind, was delivered 
first in Minneapolis in 1894, not in 1904, as you give 
the date on page 111. I had heard that admirable 
oration twice before 1904, and do not accept your at- 
tempted detractions. The Bishop, even if not having 
"had any training in or inclination toward historical 
investigation," had the advantage of being personally 
acquainted with Lincoln, and with many of his 
advisors. 

Whether Dr. Jaquess had heard of the life of 
Lincoln by Herndon, or by Lamon, does not appear, 
but he had heard of Bishop Fowler's lecture, and as he 
says that that lecture reminded him that, "I happen to 
know something on that subject (Lincoln's religion) 
that very few persons know. My wife, who has been 
dead nearly two years, was the only witness of what I 
am going to state to you as having occurred," and then 
he narrates the occurrence to his comrades. 

Your next statement is that the story, as it is thus 
told, lacks confirmatory evidence. The character of 

Twentv-fivc 



Dr. Jaquess, then in his^se^^epity^^seyeftth-year, would 
seem to be sufficient in itself ; but you say that a 
considerable number of events which occurred in sub- 
sequent years might reasonably have been expected to 
have been otherwise than they really were, if Lincoln 
had been converted in a Methodist church. 

What are those events? Is a definition of "con- 
version," as well as a definition of "infidelity" required? 

You will note the language of Dr. Jaquess : "Now, 
I have seen many persons converted. I have seen 
hundreds brought to Christ, and if ever a person was 
converted, Abraham Lincoln was converted that night 
in my house. He never joined my church, but I will 
always believe that since that night Abraham Lincoln 
lived and died a Christian gentleman." 

Was not this last true ? In fact, is it not corrobo- 
rated in every known event which occurred in Lincoln's 
life in subsequent years? 

When Lincoln returned from Washington in 1849, 
Colonel Jaquess had gone from Springfield. Who his 
successor was I have not inquired. 

Lincoln with his logical mind was not liable to 
attend church where the preaching was poor, and 1 
know of no evidence that he attended any church after 
his return from Washington, until after February, 
1850, when his wife attended, and in 1852 joined the 
Presbyterian church. He went with her to hear Dr. 
Smith, who was an able preacher. Dr. Smith did not 
claim, so far as your records show, that Mr. Lincoln 
was converted under his preaching, or in his church 
(he never joined it), and the most that can be claimed 
is that he enjoyed Dr. Smith's preaching — that he was 
helped by it, and that Dr. Smith with his book "The 
Christian's Defense," helped Lincoln to dissolve his 
doubts; he found the arguments "unanswerable." 

Twenty-si.x 



It was a question of intellect and mind. Conversion 
rather is a matter of heart, I take it. 

I have heard that Satan often comes back with old 
or new doubts after conversion. Lincoln seems to 
have been so assailed aj^ain in 1862, and it was an 
Episcopal rector who helped him. (Johnson on Lincoln 
the Christian, pp. 30-34.) 

It seems to me that the story, as told by Colonel 
Jaquess, does fit into the life of Lincoln, and that there 
is no good reason for questioning any essential ix)int of 
Colonel Jaquess' narrative. 

You call New Salem Mr. Lincoln's Ahiia Mater — 
well and good. Mr. Lincoln came from his Alma 
Mater on his borrowed horse, with his mother's Bible, 
Aesop's Fables, and Pilgrim's Progress, but like many 
another young man, he evidently had been using his 
intellect and his reason while in that school, and came 
out with many unsolved doubts. He had, for the time 
being, gotten away from his mother's prayers, although 
he carried and read, and had memorized much of his 
mother's Bible, and the book and preaching of Dr. 
Smith was what was needed to help him over the 
doubts. 

The evidence seems clear, aside from Colonel 
Jaquess' report, that somewhere between the time he 
alighted in front of Joshua's Speed Store, April \5, 
1837, and that February day in 1861, when he stood on 
the platform of the train, there had been a decided 
change of heart — a new birth — a conversion. His 
whole life shows it, and I know of no event subsequent 
to 1847 that contradicts the fact narrated by Colonel 
Jaquess. 

That there was much unbelief in Springfield, as 
well as in New Salem, is evidenced by the fact that 
each of the three close friends of Lincoln — Herndon, 

Twenty-seven 



Lamon and Speed — believed himself to be an infidel. 

After twenty-five years of such environment, Mr. 
Lincoln came forth on his way to the presidency, with 
his mother's Bible in his hand, a prayer upon his lips, 
and a firm faith in his heart that there was a prayer- 
hearing God, and that if the great God who assisted 
Washington, would be with and aid him, he would not 
fail in his allotted task. 

Lincoln was converted just as Dr. Jaquess related. 

It is interesting to note that Lincoln's closest friend, 
Joshua Speed, after his conversation with Lincoln in 
the Summer of 1864, upon belief in the Bible, over- 
came his skepticism and joined the Methodist Episcopal 
church. 

You have deliberately so reflected upon Colonel 
Jaquess, "the Fighting Parson," that a slight acquaint- 
ance with him should be sought. You lay down as the 
first question in weighing testimony, "Is the witness 
credible?" 

It is well. What kind of a man was Rev. James 
Frazier Jaquess, D. D., pastor of the Methodist Epis- 
copal church, Springfield, from the Spring of 1847 
until 1849? 

Chapter 8, of the History of the "Preacher Regi- 
ment," sometimes called "The Methodist Regiment," 
which was enlisted by Colonel Jaquess, and commanded 
by him from Shilo to the end of the war, is devoted to 
the life of its colonel, was written by one who knew 
him well, and says of him as a preacher and teacher : 

"During his whole career as a preacher and 
teacher, Mr. Jaquess was a man of strongly marked 
individuality. His address was polished and win- 
ning, his presence magnetic to a marked degree. 
He influenced all with whom he came in contact, 
and made friends by the thousand in all parts of the 
country. He was in great demand in the pulpit and 

Twenty-eight 



on the plalforni, his oratory being of the earnest, 
electric kind, that was popular with all classes of 
people, from the ripest scholar to the humblest 
laborer or frontiersman. He was never abashed in 
any company, and no man ever felt abashed in his. 
He took a living interest in all public affairs ; but in 
his chosen sphere as a Christian minister he shone 
to unsurpassed advantage. Whenever it was an- 
nounced that he was to preach, whether at a city 
church, a cross-road schoolhouse, or a backwoods 
camp-meeting, hundreds flocked to hear and went 
away to praise." 

Just the man Lincoln would be expected to wish to 
hear, and to be willing to pay a quarter to be sure that 
he might not be bored by a journeyman. 

After Shilo. he resigned as chaplain of the Sixth 
Illinois, and asked the privilege of raising and com- 
manding a "Methodist Regiment" for the war. This 
regiment was unique, nearly all of the commissioned 
officers from the colonel down, and twenty of the 
privates, were licensed Methodist preachers, while 
something over 600 of the soldiers in the ranks were 
members of the Methodist Episcopal church. When 
mustered out, the record showed that it had been in ten 
battles, and many skirmishes, and of the 972 members, 
215 had been killed or died of wounds or disease, while 
182 had been discharged on account of wounds or dis- 
abilities ; that its colonel had two horses killed under 
him in battle. His son of fourteen years was a drum- 
mer boy, captured and escaped, and is the subject of 
the romance, "The Boy of Chickamauga." 

In 1864, when all at home were tired of the war, 
certain parties from the South were in Canada, at 
Niagara Falls, talking peace, and Horace Greeley was 
urging Lincoln to treat with them, and the Peace Party 
in the North was growing like a snowball upon a 
descending incline. Lincoln believed it would be desir- 

Twentv-nine 



able, if possible, to sound Jefferson Davis personally, 
and as he expressed it, "draw his fire." 

Colonel Jaquess had proposed undertaking such a 
trip to General Rosencrans, who wrote to Lincoln, 
forwarding Jaquess' letter by J. R. Gilmore, the anti- 
slavery writer and lecturer, of Boston. Gilmore had 
three interviews with the President, who while anxious 
to obtain the information, said the trip, if made, must 
be taken on individual, unofficial responsibility, and 
that it would be dangerous, and finally Lincoln insisted 
that Gilmore accompany Jaquess. The trip was made. 

They carried "terms" to be talked to, but under no 
circumstances to be known as dictated by Lincoln. 
These were characteristic — "Surrender, Union, Eman- 
cipation, — then Amnesty, Compensation for Slaves." 
Lincoln said, "I know Jaquess will be discreet. Explain 
to him why I can not see him personally. I don't want 
to hurt his feelings." 

A two hour conference was had with Mr. Davis and 
Benjamin, his secretary of state. 

A partial report was published in the September 
and December Atlantic Monthly, 1864, as "Our Visit 
to Richmond." The balance as "A Suppressed Chapter 
in History" in the same magazine, April, 1887. The 
result was that they drew from Davis personally the 
ultimatum, "We are not fighting for slavery, wr are 
fighting for independence," and Lincoln said to Gil- 
more, "This may be worth as much to us as a half 
dozen battles. Jaquess was right, God's hand is in it. 
Publish a card of the result of your visit ; get it into the 
Tribune ; everybody is agog to hear your report. It 
will show the country that I didn't fight shy of 
Greeley's Niagara business without a reason." 

The result of the visit was published all over the 
North, the Peace Party melted away and Lincoln was 
triumphantly re-elected. 

Thirty 



When Gilmore was urging the President to give 
Jaquess an official standing for his trip, Lincoln said. 
"I know Jaquess. He feels that he is acting as God's 
servant and messenger, and he would recoil from any- 
thing like political finesse. We want to draw Davis' 
fire, but we must do it fairly." 

Garfield, Chase, Sumner and Rosencrans all ap- 
proved of Colonel Jaquess' action, and were with 
President Lincoln delighted with the result as a great 
service to the country. 

Gilmore in his report in 1864, in the Atlantic, said 
of his companion : "A man more cool, more brave, 
more self-confident, more self-devoted than this quiet 
'Western Parson,' it never was my fortune to en- 
counter." 

Now it was just thirty-three years from the time of 
Colonel Jaquess' return from Richmond with the word 
that war or disunion was the only terms possible, and 
the whole country was ringing with his name, that he 
related to his comrades in arms the story of Lincoln's 
visit to his parsonage in Springfield in 1847. He was 
then still vigorous and clear-headed, though in his 
seventy-seventh year. He was not the man either to 
magnify or exaggerate. He zcas a credible zvitness, 
and I submit that Dr. Chapman was correct when he 
recorded this incident "with complete assurance of its 
correctness," and that he was far more correct than 
you when he wrote in his Latest Light on Lincoln, 
"There is every reason for giving this remarkable story 
unquestioning credence." 

I beg to enclose a copy of the photograph of the 
witness. I am informed by his niece, Miss Fanny M. 
Jaquess, Acting Secretary of the Woman's Christian 
Association of Minneapolis, that she understands the 
original was taken in 1889, on the occasion of the 
reunion that year. 

Thirty-one 



Creed 

You have compiled for Abraham Lincohi a "creed" 
of nine articles. I have no fault to find with any one 
article taken from his addresses, messages, proclama- 
tions, and personal letters, written by himself. Half 
truths by omission is a fault. 

You say in regard to the selections you have made 
for your purpose : 

"We might go much farther and could hnd a 
considerable body of additional material, but this is 
sufficient and more than sufficient for our purpose. 
In these utterances may be found something of the 
determinism that was hammered into Lincoln by 
the early Baptist preachers and riveted by James 
Smith, along with some of the humanitarianism of 
Parker and Channing, and much zvhich lay 
unstratitied in Lincoln's own mind but flowed spon- 
taneously from his pen or dropped from his lips 
because it was native to his thinking and had come 
to be a component part of his life. Anyone who 
cares to do so may piece these utterances together 
and test his success in making a creed out of them. 
They lend themselves somewhat readily to such an 
arrangement." 

As to the early preaching, you had already recorded 
that against it, "the boy Abe Lincoln rebelled," and that 
he only mimicked and ridiculed their hammering. 

You have again forgotten his mother, and failed to 
give her credit for the "much which lay unstratified in 
Lincoln's own mind — which was native to his thinking 
and had come to be a component part of his life." 

In your study of fourteen pages of the question of 
"Why did Lincoln never join the church?" you found 
yourself compelled to accept Lincoln's own answer, as 
established beyond any reasonable doubt, as being his 
own, and might, it seems to me, have been properly 
made an article of this constructed creed : 

Thirty-two 



"/ believe that -whosoever loves the Lord, his 
God, 7cith all his heart and soul, and mind and 
strength, and his neii^hbor as himself, is a Christian 
and should be admilled as a member of the risible 
church." 

The testimony supporting- this article in the re- 
ported language of Mr. Lincoln himself is: 

"I have never united myself to any church, 
hecause I have found difficulty in giving my assent, 
without mental reservation, to the long, complicated 
statements of Christian doctrine which characterize 
their articles of helief and confessions of faith. 
When any church will inscrihe over its altars, as its 
sole qualification for membership, the Saviour's 
condensed statement of the substance of both law 
and gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church will 
I join with all my heart and all my soul." 

Whether you are right or not in your contention 
that the fault was not all with the churches, but that 
"Some share of the responsibility for his failure to 
unite with the church must belong to Lincoln himself." 
it would have been much fairer and seemed less partisan 
to not have omitted from a "creed" thrust upon him in 
the first person, this article again and again, announced 
by him and proven beyond a reasonable doubt by three 
credible witnesses, one of them Rev. Phineas D. Gur- 
ley, Presbyterian pastor, of W^ashington, one Hon. 
Henry C. Deming, Congressman for Connecticut, who 
testified to it June 8, 1865, before there was time to 
permit any growth or exaggeration. 

You say "Lincoln lacked some of the finer feelings." 
He never lacked in scrupulous, conscientious honesty ; 
he never tried to mislead a court or jury by suppressing 
material testimony, rather he ran away and washed his 
hands. 

Thirty-three 



You entirely ignore the teaching of his mother, 
shght her as he never did, and yet repeat "though a 
Calvinist in his early training" — "The Calvinism 
which he inherited and heard through his childhood." 
Trained by whom? Inherited from whom? Heard 
where? Not at his mother's knee. I am sure your 
historical research has found no evidence that any such 
inheritance, training or teaching came from this 
mother. 

The mother and the mother's influence can not be 
thus ignored in any "True Story of Lincoln's Life and 
Convictions."* 

The People Called Methodists 

Having, on page 48, asserted, for an evident pur- 
pose, as a statement of fact, "that the Lincoln family 
appears never at any time in its history to have been 
strongly under the influence of Methodism," thus 
slighting and ignoring entirely the mother, and your 
own statement on page 36, as to her participation be- 
fore and after her marriage in camp-meetings in Ken- 
tucky, you again, on page 64, make the assertion that 
Lincoln's "association with Methodists was largely in 
the political arena, where he crossed swords three times 
with Peter Cartwright." This statement lacks histor- 
ical accuracy. 

y\fter complimenting the Presiding Elder Cart- 
wright, as a doughty hero of the cross, who exerted a 
mighty influence for good in early Illinois, you say : 



*Note— In the "Outlook"' of April 14, 1920, Lyman Ab- 
bott, reviewing Dr. Barton's book, says : 

"Herndon says he was a fatalist — Barton that he was a 
Calvinist. He certainly was not a John Calvin Calvinist. 
John Calvin held that man had lost his freedom in the fall ; 
and Abraham Lincoln's whole understanding of life was 
based on his belief in the free will, and therefore the moral 
responsibility of man." 

Thirty-four 



"He, Lincoln, could not have failed to respect such 
men, but it is not altogether certain that he was tempted 
to love them." 

It is not altogether certain just what you mean by 
"them," but I hold no brief for the Methodists; they 
need no defense. 

I was impelled to write this letter by reason of the 
glaring injustice and wrong attempted to be done to 
Abraham Lincoln's mother, and to my friend, Dr. 
Watson, and the memory of his friend. Dr. Jaquess. 
Both of these wrongs grated upon my sense of justice. 

As to Lincoln's love of Methodists, the history is 
too full to require citations. They and their influence 
were ever with his family and with him, in increasing 
numbers and force, from the cabin in Kentucky to the 
White House and the tomb, where Bishop Simpson 
pronounced the funeral oration. 

The soul of Abraham Lincoln was too large to 
admit of prejudice or bickering over sects, doctrines, or 
dogmas. While he prayed, "God bless the Methodist 
church," he added, "Bless all the churches," and while 
at his invitation both Bishop Simpson and Bishop Janes 
prayed with him in the White House, so did his Quaker 
lady friend more than once, and he said to her, "I feel 
helped and strengthened by your prayers." 

He also found strength and help from the Episcopal 
rector, Francis Vinton, D. D., as well as from the 
prayers of Dr. Smith and Dr. Gurley, the pastors of his 
wife's Presbyterian churches. He was one of the elect 
who learned of the doctrine by willing to do the 
will of his Master, and any attempt to contract that 
great soul to promote a dogma is unworthy and un- 
seemly. Neither Dr. Smith nor Dr. Gurley ever made 
such an attempt, or intimated such a claim. 

Bishop Simpson is the only one to whom it is 
known that Lincoln showed his proposed Emancipation 

Thirty-five 



Proclamalion before he read it to the Cabinet, and he 
suggested that there ought to be a recognition of God 
in that important paper, which may have led to Lin- 
coln's accepting and adopting the last sentence in prac- 
tically the language submitted by a member of his 
Cabinet. 

Dr. Bowman, afterwards Bishop, was chaplain of 
the Senate during the last year of the war, and tells of 
Bishop Simpson being sent for by Lincoln on many 
occasions for consultation upon public matters, and 
that Lincoln held him in the highest esteem, and at- 
tached much importance to his counsel ; never failed to 
attend upon his ministry, as he preached often in Wash- 
ington, while Lincoln was in the White House, and 
Dr. Bowman gives this instance : 

"On one occasion, with two or three friends, I 
was conversing with Mr. Lincoln, near the distant 
window in the 'Blue Room,' when, unexpectedly, the 
door opened and Bishop Simpson entered. Imme- 
diately the President raised both arms, and started 
for the bishop almost on a run. When he reached 
him he grasped him with both hands and exclaimed, 
'Why, Bishop Simpson, how glad I am to see you !' 
In a few moments we retired, and left them alone. 
I afterwards learned that they spent several hours 
in private, and that this was one of the times when 
the bishop had been specially asked by the President 
to come to Washington for such an interview." 
The task would be endless to show the many cases 
where not only Lincoln was influenced by, but where it 
is "altogether certain that he was not only tempted 
but that he did love" such men, — among them Rev. 
Peter Akers, D. D., at the camp-meetings near the 
Salem church ; Dr. Jaquess, in Springfield ; Dr. Bow- 
man, Bishop Janes and Bishop Simpson at Washing- 
ton — but enough. 

As I have said before, I have no desire to prove that 
Lincoln was a Methodist, nor have I any need to 

Thirty-six 



defend the Methodist church or individual Methodists. 
This letter has been called forth by the injustice at- 
tempted to be done to the memory of Lincoln's angel 
mother, and the slight deliberately attempted to be 
placed upon my personal friend and former ])astor, Dr. 
Watson, and I am, Sir, 

Yours for an unbiased and true stoty of Lincoln's 
Spiritual Life and Convictions, 




405 Marquette Avenue. 



Thirty-seven 



APPENDIX 

THE CONVERSION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

By the Rev. Edward L. Watson. 

The rehgion of Abraham Lincohi is so much in de- 
bate that I feel called upon to give the following nar- 
rative of an event of which little seems to be known — 
and which is of real importance in understanding the 
man. He has been called an infidel — an unbeliever of 
varying degrees of blatancy. That he was a Christian 
in the real sense of the term is plain from his life. 
That he was converted during a Methodist revival 
seems not to be a matter of common report. The per- 
sonal element of this narrative is necessary to unfold 
the story. In 1894 I was appointed to the pastorate of 
the Hennepin Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Minneapolis, Minn., by Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, being 
transferred from Frederick, Md., a charge in Balti- 
more Conference. It was in October that we entered 
the parsonage, which was a double house, the other 
half being rented by the trustees. Shortly after our 
occupancy of the church house William B. Jacquess 
moved into the rented half of the property, and through 
this fact I became acquainted with Colonel James F. 
Jacquess, his brother. At this time Colonel Jacquess 
was an old man of eighty years or more, of command- 
ing presence and wearing a long beard, which was as 
white as snow. His title grew out of the fact of his 
being the commanding officer of the Seventy-third 
Illinois Volunteer Infantry, known as the Preacher 
Regiment. Its name was given through the publica- 
tion in the Cincinnati Commercial in September, 1862, 
of the roster of its officers : 

Thirty-eight 



Colonel — Rev. James V. Jacquess, 1). 0., late i)resi- 
dent of Quincy College. 

Lieutenant Colonel — Rev. lienjamin F. Xorthcott. 

Major — Rev. William A. Presson. 

Captains — Company B, Rev. W. B. M. Colt ; Com- 
pany C, Rev. P, McNutt; Company F, Rev. George 
W. Montgomery; Company H, Rev. James I. David- 
son; Company I, Rev. Peter Wallace; Company K, 
Rev. R. H. Laughlin. 

Six or seven of the twenty lieutenants were also 
licensed Methodist preachers. Henry A. Castle, ser- 
geant major, was the author of the article and a son- 
in-law, if I mistake not, of Colonel Jacquess. 

The history of this regiment is, in brief, as follows : 
It was organized at the instance of Governor Dick 
Yates, under Colonel Jacquess, in August, 1862, at 
Camp Butler, in Illinois, and became part of General 
Buell's army. It fought nobly at Perryville, and in 
every battle in which the Army of the Cumberland was 
engaged, from October, 1862, to the rout of Hood's 
army at Nashville. Its dead were found at Murfrees- 
boro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, where Colonel 
Jacquess won especial distinction, and in the succession 
of battles from Chattanooga to the fall of Atlanta. It 
was frequently complimented by the commanding gen- 
erals and was unsurpassed in bravery and endurance. 
It left the state one of the largest, and returned one of 
the smallest, having lost two-thirds of its men in its 
three years' service. 

Colonel Jacquess was its only colonel and came 
home disabled by wounds received at Chickamauga, 
where two horses were shot under him. He refused to 
the last (1897) to receive a pension, until in his ex- 
treme old age, at the urgent request of the Society of 
the Survivors of the Seventy-third Illinois, he allowed 

Thirty-nine 



it to be applied for. He pathetically said : "My grand- 
fathers were Revolutionary soldiers and you could get 
up a row if you mentioned pensions. My father and 
my uncles were in the War of 1812, and would take 
none. I had hoped not to receive one — but I am un- 
able now to do anything, and it has been my desire, 
and not the fault of the government, that I have never 
received a pension." These words were spoken in 1897 
— and not long afterward Colonel Jacquess went to his 
reward. 

Toward the end of the war President Lincoln sent 
Colonel Jacquess as a secret emissary to arrange for 
peace and the settlement of the slave question, so as to 
avert further shedding of blood. His adventures in 
this role are of thrilling interest. The foregoing is told 
to show the quality of the man whom it was my privi- 
lege to meet in 1896, when he was in extreme old 
age. The honors conferred upon him by President 
Lincoln and the confidence reposed in him grew out of 
events which preceded the war. This was no other 
than the conversion of Mr. Lincoln under the ministry 
of the Rev. James F. Jacquess, at Springfield, 111., in 
the year 1839. The Rev. James F. Jacquess was sta- 
tioned at this new town — then of but a few thousand 
inhabitants — in 1839, when Lincoln met him during a 
series of revival services conducted in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. Lincoln had but recently come to 
the town — having removed from New Salem, which 
was in a decadent state. As a member of the legisla- 
ture, Lincoln had been a chief agent in establishing the 
state capital at Springfield, and though in debt and 
exceedingly poor, he hoped to find friends and practice 
in the growing town. He was then thirty years of 
age, and had had few advantages of any sort. It 
was on a certain night, when the pastor preached from 
the text, "Ye must be born again," that Lincoln was 

Forty 



in attendance and was greatly interested. After the 
service he came round to the Httle parsonage, and, hke 
another Nicodemus, asked, "How can these things be?" 
Mr. Jacquess explained as best he could the mystery 
of the new birth, and at Lincoln's request, he and his 
wife kneeled and prayed with the future President. It 
was not long before Mr. Lincoln expressed his sense 
of pardon and arose with peace in his heart. 

The narrative, as told thus far, is as my memory 
recalled it. Since writing it, the same as told by 
Colonel Jacquess has recently been discovered by me 
in Minutes of the Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual 
Reunion Survivors Seventy-third Regiment, Illinois 
Infantry, Volunteers (page 30), a copy of which is be- 
fore me. This meeting, the last (probably) that 
Colonel Jacquess attended, was held Tuesday and 
Wednesday, September 28, 29, 1897, in the Supreme 
Court room of the State Capitol Building, Spring- 
field, 111. To quote Colonel Jacquess : "The men- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln's name recalls to my mind an oc- 
currence that perhaps I ought to mention. I notice that 
a number of lectures are being delivered recently on 
Abraham Lincoln. Bishop Fowler has a most splendid 
lecture on Abraham Lincoln, but they all, when they 
reach one point, run against a stone wall, and that is 
in reference to Mr. Lincoln's religious sentiments. I 
happen to know something on that subject that very 
few persons know. My wife, who has been dead near- 
ly two years, was the only witness of what I am going 
to state to you as having occurred. Very soon after 
my second year's work as a minister in the Illinois 
Conference, I was sent to Springfield. There were 
ministers in the Illinois Conference who had been labor- 
ing for twenty-five years to get to Springfield, the capi- 
tal of the state. When the legislature met, there were 
a great many people here, and it was thought to be a 

Fortv-one 



matter of great glory among the ministers to be sent 
to Springfield. But I was not pleased with my assign- 
ment. I felt my inability to perform the work. I did 
not know what to do. I simply talked to the Lord 
about it, however, and told Him that unless I had 
help I was going to run away. I heard a voice saying 
to me 'Fear not,' and I understood it perfectly. Now I 
am coming to the point I want to make to you. I was 
standing at the parsonage door one Sunday morning, a 
beautiful morning in May, when a little boy came up to 
me and said : 'Mr. Lincoln sent me around to see if 
you was going to preach today.' Now, I had met Mr. 
Lincoln, but I never thought any more of Abe Lin- 
coln than I did of any one else. I said to the boy : 
'You go back and tell Mr. Lincoln that if he will come 
to church he will see whether I am going to preach 
or not.' The little fellow stood working his fingers 
and finally said: 'Mr. Lincoln told me he would give 
me a quarter if I would find out whether you are going 
to preach.' I did not want to rob the little fellow of his 
income, so I told him to tell Mr. Lincoln that I was 
going to try to preach. I was always ready and willing 
to accept any assistance that came along, and whenever 
a preacher, or one who had any pretense in that direc- 
tion, would come along I would thrust him into my 
pulpit and make him preach, because I felt that any- 
body could do better than I could. 

The church was filled that morning. It was a good- 
sized church, but on that day all the seats were filled. 
I had chosen for my text the words : '¥e must be 
born again,' and during the course of my sermon I laid 
particular stress on the word 'must.' Mr. Lincoln 
came into the church after the services had commenced, 
and there being no vacant seats, chairs were put in the 
altar in front of the pulpit, and Mr. Lincoln and 
Governor French and wife sat in the altar during the 

Forty-two 



entire services, Mr. Lincoln on my left and Governor 
French on my ric:ht, and I noticed that Mr. Lincoln 
appeared to be deeply interested in the sermon. A few 
days after that Sunday Mr. Lincoln called on me and 
infomied me that he had been greatly impressed with 
my remarks on Sunday and that he had come to talk 
with me further on the matter. I invited him in, and 
my wife and I talked and prayed with him for hours. 
Now, I have seen many persons converted ; I have seen 
hundreds brought to Christ, and if ever a person was 
converted, Abraham Lincoln was converted that night 
in my house. His wife was a Presbyterian, but from 
remarks he made to me he could not accept Calvinism. 
He never joined my church, but I will always believe 
that since that night Abraham Lincoln lived and died 
a Christian gentleman." 

Here ends the narrative of Colonel Jacquess. Now 
compare that which my memory preserved for the 
past thirteen years and the Colonel's own printed ac- 
count, and the discrepancies are small. It is with 
pleasure I am able to confirm my memory by the words 
of the original narrator. It is with no small degree of 
pleasure that I am able to prove that Methodism had a 
hand in the making of the greatest American. Colonel 
James F. Jacquess has gone to his reward, but it is his 
honor to have been used by his Master to help in the 
spiritualization of the great man who piloted our na- 
tional destinies in a time of exceeding peril. It is an 
honor to him, and through him to the denomination of 
which he was a distinguished member. 



Baltimore, Md. 

(The Christian Advocate — November 11, 1909.; 

Forty-three 




RE\'. COL. JAMES F. JAQUESS 



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